It is not exactly a new thing to market your real estate via social media. Many agents employ the services of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Whatsapp and other social media platforms to reach clients and make connections with other industry professionals. However, not every agent is leveraging these platforms as well as they could to get the most out of them when it comes to real estate social media marketing.

We take you back to the basics with our tips on how to increase awareness of your business and get the most out of social media when marketing your properties.

But first, before you even get on social media, you need to ensure your website is well designed and is user-friendly. The best results from social media would mean extra traffic to your website, and if on arrival, visitors find your website hard to use and unappealing, they will immediately leave, never to return! You don’t want that!

Update the pages that need it periodically. Keep your listings relevant to your audience, with good descriptions and images, etc. This will make it worthwhile for visitors to your site.

Effective Social Media Tactics For Real Estate Pros

Each social media platform is different from the others in one way or the other. As such, the type of content you send there should be different based on the platform. So, depending on which channel you use, modify your updates to maximize their potential for engagement on each. Some of the best content and engagement tactics for each social outlet worth trying include:

1. Facebook
   

   Allows you just about every freedom. You can write very lengthy posts, include pictures and add links to your own website as well. This is a platform you can use extensively in your quest to sell or rent out your real estate. However, do not use your own personal account for this. It is not professional. Instead, create a company account, which you will use solely for promoting your business. To reach more interested users from Facebook, boost your Facebook posts and include geo-tags in those so they are shown to people in areas you’ve identified to be of relevance to the type of real estate you sell or rent.

   There are tons of other options available to help you reach just the right people by entering your targeting preferences. You need to keep your updates interesting and fun. You can tweet content that is fun, and related to your industry about 80% of the time and reserve the remaining 20% for the posts that you intend to pull in deals with. Facebook sends you a weekly report on how well your page and posts are doing. Through this, you can get insights as to what is working and what needs to be changed. A personal account won’t give you this kind of data.

2. Twitter
   

   Twitter is another great way to keep connected to your clients. Unlike Facebook, Twitter limits you to 140 characters (or less), to give updates to your followers. Use it to engage, and keep strengthening your relationships. Chat with your followers by posing questions or offering your own insights (e.g. things you want home buyers and sellers to know). It is a very fast-paced platform and requires your constant attention if you want to get the most out of it. Tweet questions, use hashtags, tweet local news that is of relevance to your followers and engage them. If you constantly tweet only about your real estate offerings, you’re likely to lose them quickly.

3. Google+

   
   The social media platform owned by Google allows you all the flexibility Facebook does and also allows you to interact via video calls through their live Hangouts feature. You can take advantage of this feature for leads and followers who want to ask questions and/or learn about a particular real estate listing you’re advertising. You could even negotiate price and payment options directly from here.

4. Instagram
   

   This is where you’ll be glad you followed our advice on how to take great real estate photos, because the more engaging and attractive your picture posted is, the higher your chances of engaging your users and getting them to come to your site. The downside here is, Instagram does not support including links to your posts. You will have to put on your graphic designer hat and develop images that will start a conversation which could possibly lead to interest in seeing more, and that’s when you supply them with a URL they can copy and paste in their browsers to access your site. The main way to measure engagement with your post on this platform is through the number of likes and comments you receive on each post. Lots of agents with good quality photos are getting really good business off this platform. You too could be one of them!

5. LinkedIn

   This is more of a professional networking platform, but that doesn’t mean you cannot make some money off it too.       Since it is a more serious type of audience here, you need to tone down the frequency of your posts if you don’t want to get ignored by users. Keep your posts relevant, interesting and engaging every time. You can also promote your posts, in a fashion similar to Facebook, to reach a wider audience as a company page. The added advantage here is you can widen your network of industry professionals through LinkedIn to increase your contacts and also strengthen your relevance/brand online.

Additional Tips

1. Posting frequency and timing
   

   Posting at noon on Facebook may not also work equally well for Twitter or Instagram. You should develop a social media marketing schedule for each channel that aligns with the days and times during which you get the most traction for your real estate offerings. You could find automation tools for doing this if you find you might be occupied during the peak moments. Examples are Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Buffer.

2. Company information

   This is the first thing you should take care of when creating a social media account. You should always make it clear how to find you as prospective clients need to know how to get in touch with you. You should include links to your site’s “about us” page in your social media account profiles. Since your business details might change over time, update the information from time to time as necessary so the information is always up to date.

3. Links are very powerful. Include them always

   This is fairly easy to do on most social media sites. It gets tricky on others like Instagram, which doesn’t offer linking capabilities in posts. You can get around this by including a link in your profile, which means you can only ever have one link. Use it wisely. You can also get around this by capitalizing on Instagram’s stories feature to include links to your listings. Alternatively, you can try out third-party tools like LinkIn.Bio, Lnk.bio, LinkTr.ee to create a mini-website with relevant links on your Instagram platform. On the other social media sites with no restrictions, wherever possible, include a link to your website and content. You could get 100 shares for a single post on Facebook that offers some prime real estate with a great deal, but without a link that leads to your site, you’re missing out on an opportunity for generating and nurturing leads, and ultimately closing deals!

Following the tips above and optimising your real estate social media profiles should bring a boost to the amount of interest your real estate offerings generate online. However, if you find keeping your site optimised to handle the traffic and to keep users engaged is daunting, you could always just share your listing from meqasa.com on the major social media platforms. It saves you a lot of the headache and brings you great results all the same. While you’re at it, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to see how we’re incorporating these tips.